Can ATG Do THIS?

Advanced Tactics is a versatile turn-based strategy system that gives gamers the chance to wage almost any battle in any time period. The initial release focuses on World War II and includes a number of historical scenarios as well as a full editor! This forum supports both the original Advanced Tactics and the new and improved Advanced Tactics: Gold Edition.

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Werewolf13
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Can ATG Do THIS?

Post by Werewolf13 »

I've got DC:W2P - very nice system.

Got to wondering about ATG since it is very similar to DC:Warsaw to Paris.

I've got VG 6th Fleet and VG 7th Fleet. Never really had a chance to play either with another person or even solitaire for that matter but have always wanted to.

Scale is large enough to fit entire Med onto a map about 100 hexes across by 50 down (IIRC). Units are individual ships. Time scale is 8 hours/turn and hexes are about 50 nm across.

Does ATG support scales like that?
Can custom units be created with different stats for each unit?
Can custom rules be created?

Would definitely be worth the $29 Matrix wants for me to be able to build a mod like that.
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Twotribes
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RE: Can ATG Do THIS?

Post by Twotribes »

Probably, the only problem is that the AI is not very capable when it comes to Naval combat or ships. If you want human versus human no problem. If you want a competent AI that would be a stretch with Naval as the primary.
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philabos
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RE: Can ATG Do THIS?

Post by philabos »

I had a similar thought. Would be interested to know if you can create named naval units on a worldwide map . I am not particularly concerned about ai.
Can you scale movement over the map with specific speed over a continuous time period?
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ernieschwitz
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RE: Can ATG Do THIS?

Post by ernieschwitz »

Scale is large enough to fit entire Med onto a map about 100 hexes across by 50 down (IIRC). Units are individual ships. Time scale is 8 hours/turn and hexes are about 50 nm across.

Does ATG support scales like that?
Can custom units be created with different stats for each unit?
Can custom rules be created?

ATG could easily encompas a hexmap of 100 times 50 no problem. It gets problematic at around 40.000 hexes, or more, especially when you have an AI running.

ATG can support any number of custom units. You have to make them before the game however, or make an algorithm for how to make them (i.e. different variantions on the theme light tank).

ATG can support any number of rule changes. In fact most rules are optional, and binary, so you can either decide to have them incorperated or not, and some rules allow for percentile changes or hex effect distances being changed.

So all in all that would be a yes.
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ernieschwitz
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RE: Can ATG Do THIS?

Post by ernieschwitz »

I had a similar thought. Would be interested to know if you can create named naval units on a worldwide map . I am not particularly concerned about ai.
Can you scale movement over the map with specific speed over a continuous time period?

If you mean creating ships with different names i.e. the USS Enterprise and the USS Ranger, being different but the same class (Aircraft carrier) then no, but if you mean that different classes of ships could be created, like light carrier, heavy carrier etc. then yes.

Speed over time is an easy thing to do, so yes.
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ironduke1955
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RE: Can ATG Do THIS?

Post by ironduke1955 »

Playing Bomber's 1930 Mod Battleships are named I guess there is no reason why you can't have a class of Aircraft Carrier called Yorktown with a distinctive set of stats, it would mean that you could produce more than one of that type. Playing Bombers Mod, I had a 1930's BB named Queen Elizabeth that I could build I had 3 of them.
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ernieschwitz
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RE: Can ATG Do THIS?

Post by ernieschwitz »

In general, ATG can do anything most turn based games can do, its just a matter of programming it correctly.

I once was part of an a email exchange that went something like this.

Bombur: We can´t do that, this is Advanced Tactics not Advanced Civilization
Tweber: It could be, there really are not limits to what Advanced Tactics can do.

After learning alot more about the editor, coding, and Vic upgrading Advanced Tactics to Gold status, I tend to agree with Tweber: There really is no turn-based game that ATG can not in some way or another be made into.
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  • Advanced Tactics Gold
    DC: Warsaw to Paris
    DC: Community Project.
Try this Global WW2 Scenario: https://www.vrdesigns.net/scenario.php?nr=280
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Jeffrey H.
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RE: Can ATG Do THIS?

Post by Jeffrey H. »

ORIGINAL: Werewolf1326

I've got DC:W2P - very nice system.

Got to wondering about ATG since it is very similar to DC:Warsaw to Paris.

I've got VG 6th Fleet and VG 7th Fleet. Never really had a chance to play either with another person or even solitaire for that matter but have always wanted to.

Scale is large enough to fit entire Med onto a map about 100 hexes across by 50 down (IIRC). Units are individual ships. Time scale is 8 hours/turn and hexes are about 50 nm across.

Does ATG support scales like that?
Can custom units be created with different stats for each unit?
Can custom rules be created?

Would definitely be worth the $29 Matrix wants for me to be able to build a mod like that.

I don't think the ATG system is so good at a ranged combat system with LOS and spotting as important parts of the game.

There are ways that have been tried to abstract certain unit types into ranged fire type weapons but they come with some compromises to spotting.

Take a look at the attemped warhammer 40k mod for an example. Also note that a small unit, 10 man, squad based mod with LOS and ranged fire has not been attemped.

As others have pointed out, the mods that have been created do show how much can be done in the game.



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philabos
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RE: Can ATG Do THIS?

Post by philabos »

ORIGINAL: ironduke1955

Playing Bomber's 1930 Mod Battleships are named I guess there is no reason why you can't have a class of Aircraft Carrier called Yorktown with a distinctive set of stats, it would mean that you could produce more than one of that type. Playing Bombers Mod, I had a 1930's BB named Queen Elizabeth that I could build I had 3 of them.
If I understand correctly, you can have a class of vessel, build a different class, but you could not differentiate between the vessels within the class.
Put,another,way, all five of the Queen Elixabeth's would have the same name?
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ironduke1955
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RE: Can ATG Do THIS?

Post by ironduke1955 »

Yes if you create the type Yorktown: Aircraft Carrier then all subsequent types built under that type will be identical with the same name though under the Unit name you can change that to read whatever you like.
You can create as many of these, as you like creating a blueprint for all vessels that you require for the scenario/mod, I am not a mod creator so I cannot say if there is a limit to the number of unique units that can be created, but my guess is the only limit is your patience

The Pocket Battleship created for the GD1938 mod, represents the Bismark I suppose you could create a class called bismark, but as this is the 2nd World War the Germans may consider building more of the same type.

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philabos
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RE: Can ATG Do THIS?

Post by philabos »

Ah, so after you build, let's say the five QE's, you can subsequently rename four of them if I understand correctly.
Thanks for the feedback.
GrumpyMel
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RE: Can ATG Do THIS?

Post by GrumpyMel »

What you would do is create a class of ships, say the Bismark Class, and that is the name of the SFT (Sub-Formation Type) you would create in the editor. Then you could create a UNIT which you named "The Bismark" in the editor and place 1 Bismark Class SFT in that unit. Then you could create a 2nd Unit called "The Tirpitz" and place 1 Bismark Class SFT in that unit. It doesn't actually harm your combat capabilities any by having 9 ships in a single unit or dividing them out into 9 units of 1 ship each. What you can't do, I believe, is force the A.I. to keep to a limit of 1 SFT per unit. But you could easily have a house rule for that when playing against a human opponent.

ATG doesn't do LOS....as in if you have a hill hex between 2 units which are both on plains, it won't stop them from seeing and shooting at each other..... not really so much an issue with pure naval combat at sea. It does handle spotting and recon pretty well. With a range of 50 NM per hex, I don't think you'd have much of an issue with ranged naval gunfire..... although at smaller scales, there are ways to simulate that.

P.S. Alternately you could create an individualy named SFT for each individual ship you want to model. The Editor does have a Copy SFT function..... and the game can still run well with quite a few unique SFT's. I don't know the upper limit but I do have a scenario that uses around 300 different unique SFT's and the game runs it perfectly well. It can get a bit cumbersome though. Unless you were ok with having multiple ships (SFT's) named "The Bismark" under that model. What you would likely want to do is turn off Production (at least for those named ships) and have an alternate means of having them come into the game.... either through events in the editor or possibly through action cards.
philabos
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RE: Can ATG Do THIS?

Post by philabos »

Thanks for the explanation. Might be a bit clunky but I don't mind working for the result.
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Bombur
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RE: Can ATG Do THIS?

Post by Bombur »

A few comments:

1-The Pocket Battleship in GD1938 isn´t the Bismarck class, but, instead, the Deustchland class (Graf Spee, Admiral Scherr and Lutzow. They were 10.000 tons Cruisers armed with 6x11in guns
2-What is VC 6th Fleet, I´m curious...
3-In ATG, you can easily edit ship classes, while you can edit individual ships, it will create a gameplay nightmare because you will limited to 8 ships taskforces, not to mention the excessive number of SFT´s the poor scenario creator will have to edit[:(]
4-8h turns will be somewhat troublesome, because you cannot set less than 1day/rounds (althought you could set abstracts round lenght and edit a message setting day and hour each round) . You also might edit night and day effects
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